1860-1911

---

Collection Description

The Oxford Class Photographs collection includes 1124 class and faculty photographs from 1860 – 1911. Although several years are outstanding, the online collection includes 1266 students and faculty members. The original photographs include both albumen and silver gelatin prints and can be divided into three formats:

• Individual images mounted on cabinet cards adhered to the back of a multiple window mat
• Collages in which the individual images are adhered directly onto the front of the backing board
• Single images of groups of people adhered to the front of the backing board

Due to age and storage conditions, many of the original images suffer significant damage from exposure to insects, moisture, light, mishandling, as well as the natural decomposition of photographic processing materials.

A more detailed description of conservation treatment is available.

---

Digitizing: Master and Derivative Images

Individual images on cabinet cards were scanned on several flatbed scanners (Epson Perfection 1650, Epson Perfection 64OU and Epson Perfection 1250). The larger collages and single images were digitally photographed with a Rodenstock lens and PhaseOne camera back mounted on a TTI Reflex 45ie copy stand with 250 watt halogen photo optic lamps on Matthews Studio Equipment (MSE) light stands. The unretouched master images were saved as uncompressed TIFF files and burned to CD using Roxio Toast software on both OS 9 and OS 10 Mac operating systems. Using custom batch processes in Photoshop 7 software, two derivative files were created from these master files.

Master images

• Resolution: 600 ppi
• Bit depth: 24 bit color for albumen and 8-bit gray scale for silver gelatin
• File size: approximately 10 – 30 MB depending on the size of original image
• 100% scale
• Unsharp mask on
• Saved as uncompressed TIFF files

Small images

Large images

Back to top of page

---

Database Information and Web Delivery

Information about each photograph, including the unique image number (an eight digit number complying to ISO 9660), subject name, title/course/note information, year and class and faculty or student status, was entered into an MS Access database. The database tables were then exported to a TXT file and imported into Dreamweaver 4.0 templates via the Import, Tabular Data function. The individual pages are saved as static HTML.

Back to top of page

---

Acknowledgments

Among the many people to thank for the successful completion of this project are:

Kitty McNeill, Oxford College
Nancy Watkins, University Archives
Deanna McCoy, Oxford College
Alice Hickcox, Beck Center
Chuck Spornick, Beck Center
Shannon O'Daniel, University Technology Services
Gabe Klehr, Student employee

Project managers: Lars Meyer, Preservation Officer and Ann Frellsen, Conservator
Image conservation and digitization, database design, and web delivery: Kate Murray

Back to top of page

Introduction